a note from the underground

Today on the tube home I sat opposite a man who was obviously a Russian Orthodox priest: he was of indecipherable age, with a ridiculously long, grey beard; thin, with somehow thin-looking skin. Glasses. A big black sheepskin coat with a fur collar, and a black robe underneath it. I was watching him on the platform as the train drew in. When he got on, he sat down opposite me, as I sat innocently enough knitting with my silver space-age supersonic circular needles, and to my astonishment as I was entertaining a long train of thought a woman came on and sat down next to him. Headscarf, grey hair, terrible skin. Red blotches. Awful clothes and, I couldn't help but notice, a black coat (not sheepskin for her, poor thing) with a fake fur collar. Completely make-up-free, and she could use a better skin-care regimen from the looks of it. She looked utterly not of this world at all, but of a world one can only read about, and imagine: a world of peasants and artistocrats, of Decembrists (note: not "Decemberists", the fools) and duels in the snow and carriages awaiting and exile in the Urals. Plots, samovars, folk songs in a minor key. Embroidered textiles. Well, you get the picture. Wolves, and painted doors.

So I sat there, and the two started conversing, in Russian. I could make out nothing. But it did take me back to the old days, when I used to have Russian lessons with a Soviet emigré called Natasha, from Leningrad, in the kitchen of her parents' apartment in Hartford, CT. I was fascinated by all the case endings and in love with the alphabet, the strange closed vowels and the poetry of it all.

Anyway, these two were straight out of Dostoyevsky. They chatted very contentedly, too, all the way to their stop. Laughing a little, in the way of people who understand each other so well there's no need to actually laugh. She was casting eyes like stitches in the direction of my supersonic needles, but he would have none of it. He might even have thought it was sinful. Do you think? She held a little National Gallery gift-shop bag on her lap, in her scrubbed hands, but it never got referred to, and when they got up to leave she cast one final glance at my own hands, but he ignored me cruelly as a tyrant as he navigated his path off the train.